The Mast-Head: The Real Hillary

Listening to coverage of the presidential race, I have been struck by a repeatedly heard observation that Hillary Clinton is remote, frosty, not someone you would want to have a beer with. Maybe that is true; presidential candidates sometimes come off far differently than they really are in person. Someone I used to work with years ago who knew Bob Dole said he was a hoot — warm, funny, and a joy to be around. The presidential race press corps, back then, too, decided he was a stiff.

The frequent view expressed by journalists and pundits seems at odds with the little that I know firsthand about Mrs. Clinton, whom I heard speak at Tom Twomey’s funeral last year.

Hillary and Bill Clinton were friends of Tom Twomey’s, but it still was a surprise when she and the former president appeared through a side door at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton Village and took seats near the front. Though I took no notes at the time, what she said did not matter as much as how she said it.

 She spoke extemporaneously and with deep feeling, linking Tom’s role as a local leader, fund-raiser, and activist to a kind of American tradition of people who knew how to make things happen in their communities. I was impressed by how natural it seemed to her. Bill Clinton was supposed to be the smooth, gregarious one, but, it seemed that she had a gift as well.

Richard Ben Cramer, the author of “What It Takes,” about the 1988 primaries, said that a vote for president was the least rational vote Americans ever made, given the scale of the job. This year, when fear seems the central theme, this is more true than ever.

My take is that the fear cuts both ways. Donald Trump fans the worst imaginings of certain segments of the population in his bizarre bid for the White House — and on the Clinton side, fear seems as powerful a motivating force, if not greater, except that the anxiety is that a maniac might take over the White House in January. If anything is going to get out the vote, this might be it.